Peter Hunt

First, it was a flagpole. Back in 1997, inside the Windsor bubble based at Balmoral – where the priority was two princes whose mother had just died – it made complete and utter sense for no flag to fly at Buckingham Palace. Protocol dictated one didn’t have the Union Jack at half-mast at the institution’s headquarters. Those mourning Diana, Princess of Wales, and those writing the newspaper headlines didn’t give a fig for protocol. The passions being displayed on the streets of London prompted headlines such as ‘Show Us You Care’ and ‘Where Is Our Queen? Where Is Her Flag’? And in the end the tabloid keyboard warriors delivered a visible Queen and a flagpole that was bare no longer.

Charles is a prince on a perilous path. It’s a well-trodden one that is proving more problematic the closer he gets to having a crown placed on his head. He has opinions, who doesn’t. He wants to share them, like the rest of us. His decades long predicament is that he occupies a privileged position which should limit his ability to hold forth. His once private – and not denied – belief that the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is ‘appalling’ is not the consensus view. A man teetering on the edge of inheriting a unifying role as Head of the Nation has entered a divisive debate very firmly on the side of Boris Johnson’s opponents.

Asked at the start of the Golden Jubilee as to which one of the many events he was most looking forward to, the Queen’s husband answered in typical Philip fashion with two words: ‘the end’. There’ll have been times during the run-up to the Platinum weekend when those around the Queen may well have shared these sentiments as they anticipated what could have gone awry. There were plenty of potential clouds on the jubilee horizon. One by one, they were dispersed. Covid-19’s silver lining revealed itself when Prince Andrew tested positive. He had to recover rather than attempt to kickstart his rehabilitation on his mother’s coat tails. The greatest concern of the Jubilee organisers will have been the Queen’s health.

Once again, a moment that should be a unifying and celebratory for the Windsors has attracted division and discord. It has been reported today that Harry and Meghan will not appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. All of this controversy for a fleeting appearance on what someone described on social media as ‘an outdoor patio on the second floor of an old building’. It’s the world’s most famous outdoor patio, utilised first by Queen Victoria in 1851 to mark the opening of the Great Exhibition. Since then, the Buckingham Palace balcony has been a focal point and climax of significant national celebrations and commemorations. Even Neville Chamberlain rocked up there, fresh from signing the Munich agreement.

Queen Camilla. Once a far-fetched prospect, now a reality – when the day comes – thanks to this extraordinary intervention by the Queen. No one sensible would have put money on such an outcome in November 1995 after Diana, Princess of Wales declared in her infamous Panorama interview that 'there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded'. Such was the antipathy towards Camilla and the near adoration for Diana, that a totally false story of someone throwing bread rolls at the future duchess in a supermarket car park took hold in the public consciousness. Mindful of this antipathy – and the polls that said people wouldn’t stomach Camilla being crowned - the Queen has taken her time. Quite a bit of time.

The blindingly obvious continues to evade Prince Andrew. There is no way back to public life for the son of a monarch and the ninth in line to the throne. Blinkered, he used the days after his father’s death to dip his toes in the waters of public redemption. His efforts, especially his attempt to wear the uniform of an admiral on the day of the funeral, raised eyebrows – not least amongst some senior royals. Their concern, hidden for months behind palace walls, is on very public display in the Sunday Times. We now know that William, a king in waiting, sees his uncle as a ‘threat’ to the royal family. His intervention will add a frisson to the family Christmas gathering.

It’s not a good look, aged 61, to be hiding behind your mother. The ninth in line to the throne joined the Queen at Balmoral, making it difficult for papers to be served in the Virginia Giuffre civil case. The Aberdeenshire estate may cover 50,000 acres, but it hasn’t provided refuge — a state of being that has eluded Andrew for the past six years. The Queen’s favourite son (and one of her blind spots) has a damaged reputation that continues to be pummelled remorselessly. It’s a process that has produced — on his part — one flawed strategy after another, from the disastrous Newsnight interview to trying to prove that as a prince he could run and he could hide.

The tone of his delivery was subdued, which belied the severity with which the future king, Prince William, battered an institution that has historically striven to please and not provoke his family. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KDOUlmO8wQ There was not one bit of comfort for the BBC in the 315 words uttered by William. This was the most damning criticism a senior royal has ever unleashed on the national broadcaster. Once lauded for its Diana scoop, the BBC will now forever be haunted by the accusation that its failures contributed significantly to the ‘fear, paranoia and isolation’ that Diana experienced in the final years of her life.

The institution waited two days before responding to the Oprah interview with a statement that acknowledged the allegations around race were concerning, but it omitted any condemnation of racism. In just twelve seconds this morning, Prince William tackled the central charge head on.  https://twitter.com/MattSunRoyal/status/1369974057140166656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The brothers are riven, in their trenches and communicating via chat show hosts and off the record briefings to newspapers TV doorstepping — shouting a question at someone without prior agreement while armed with a camera and microphone — can be a fruitless task. Doing it when the target is a royal is a soulless endeavour. This morning, at a school in east London, fortune favoured the bold.

An institution that weathered and survived the abdication crisis and the aftermath of the death of Diana Princess of Wales is now left reeling by a two-hour long programme on primetime American television. It’s a broadcast in which the grandson of a queen and his wife made crystal clear that marrying into the British royal family in the 21st century is no fairytale. It’s a one-sided account of Megxit that will incense those who insist they did try to help the newest Windsor The claim of racism is one that will endure. No Palace spin can erase it from the collective memory. The charge is that one of Harry’s relatives asked him, when Meghan was pregnant with Archie, 'how dark his skin might be when he is born'.

It will be a saddened Prince Harry who will digest the verdict of much of the British media on the denouement to Megxit. In the eyes of most of those who write about the Windsors, the Queen is above reproach and the couple who exiled themselves are once again found wanting. Their West coast inspired talk of service being ‘universal’ is the latest entry on a charge sheet of sins they’ve committed against a venerated institution. To Harry and Meghan’s critics – and they have plenty – the equation is simple. If millions of Netflix and Spotify dollars are pouring into your bank accounts, you can’t be opening fetes in Chipping Sodbury; not that such an opportunity was likely to have ever been high on their royal to do list.